


Here Comes the Sun

by SamoanSexGodReigns



Series: Kinktober 2018 [23]
Category: World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Hunters, Blow Jobs, Do not post to another site, F/M, Interracial Relationship, Kinktober 2018, Non-Wrestling AU, Oral Sex, Size Difference, Vaginal Sex, Werewolves, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-05
Updated: 2019-11-05
Packaged: 2021-01-23 14:53:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21322003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SamoanSexGodReigns/pseuds/SamoanSexGodReigns
Summary: Sheamus is hunting the werewolf that killed one of his oldest friends when he finds Ember caught in one of his traps, but what does she know about the case, if anything, and is there something more sinister at play?
Relationships: Aleister Black/Ember Moon | Athena, Ember Moon | Athena/Alesiter Black, Ember Moon | Athena/Sheamus, Sheamus/Ember Moon | Athena
Series: Kinktober 2018 [23]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1151888
Comments: 3
Kudos: 8





	Here Comes the Sun

**Author's Note:**

> Sad I didn't get anything posted on Halloween, but this turned into a behemoth, and I couldn't control it. I read over it twice, but there's bound to be some mistakes. I apologize if you spot them.
> 
> Pairing suggested to me by my husband — this one's for you, babe.
> 
> Title taken from Till Dawn by The Weeknd

Dawn, on a crisp fall morning, finds Sheamus walking through the forest of his childhood as dawn stretches its orangey-pink fingers over the countryside. Soft, dewy light filters through the trees and paints everything in a dreamy golden glow straight from a storybook, and the sounds of animals stirring in branches and burrows fill his ears as he silently makes his way through the underbrush. It takes a man of great skill to be able to move so quietly, especially at his size – 6’8” and 267 pounds of lean Irish muscle, thanks Ma – but Sheamus is one of the best. His incredible array of talents is why he left ten years ago, and it’s what brings him back now after all this time.

His oldest colleague and older friend had been brutally murdered in these woods not seven days ago, and Sheamus means to exterminate the beast that killed him. 

It’s his specialty, after all, hunting and killing all manner of mythical and supernatural creatures, and Sheamus excels at it. He’s killed witches, demons, vampires, mermaids – you name it, he’s got its head in a jar on his mantle – and he’s never failed once he’s taken on a case. This time, this incredibly personal time won’t be any different. 

After speaking to the local police, of which no less than three were his cousins, he’s able to pretty positively identify the culprit. Attacked on a full moon, torn to shreds by some type of animal, unknown canid hair found on the body. They were definitely dealing with a werewolf, and he looks forward to adding the mongrels head to his collection. 

Which is precisely why he’s taking this damn hike in the first place. 

About twenty-four hours ago, he set up dozens of sterling silver traps in these woods, each enchanted to only capture beings with magic in their blood, and this morning, like any good hunter, he’s come back to see if he’s caught anything. If he’s lucky, there’ll be a nice surprise waiting for him when he gets there.

The first three traps he checks are empty, but as it turns out, the fourth time’s the charm. As he advances from the east, he can hear the telltale whimpers of a wolf in distress, and he slows his gait so he can assess the situation before the wolf becomes aware of him. The wolf might be trapped, but a trapped wolf, especially one in pain, is just as dangerous as a free one, so he approaches cautiously. When the trap is in sight, he ducks behind the trunk of a large tree to conceal his arrival while he determines the best course of action.

Caught between the silver teeth of the modified bear trap is the right hind leg of a werewolf. It’s about seven feet long with tawny brown and black fur and probably close to four hundred pounds of preternaturally enhanced strength, speed, and agility. It’s curled up on itself and licking at the wound where metal digs into vulnerable skin as it whines and cries in pain. The blood around the laceration is drying and crusted, but every time the wolf tugs uselessly at its leg, more blood oozes out around teeth of the trap. Sheamus guesses the wolf's been in the trap for at least six hours, and it looks exhausted, the somber lines of its body projecting defeat even as its brain tells it to fight on. It’s pathetic really.

There’s always a chance, of course, that this isn’t the wolf he’s looking for, but even if that’s the case, he’ll at least be able to interrogate this one before sending it mercifully into the great beyond.

Pulling the tranquilizer gun from the holster under his right arm, he walks towards the wolf, no longer trying to cover up his presence and the wolf startles, yelps, and then curls up tighter around its injured leg as Sheamus raises his gun. The wolf turns pleading red eyes on him, and he feels nothing as he pulls the trigger and pumps the monster full of ketamine. 

)0()0()0(

All Ember knows is pain, pain, and fear. The crushing teeth of the trap have torn through skin and muscle to snap the bone underneath clean in two, and as her blood drains into the earth, the silver of the trap drains her magic to the point where healing and escaping become nothing but a distant memory. When she first stumbled into the trap, her body seized with agony and adrenaline, and as panic flooded her system, she did more harm than good by trying to yank her way to escape. For a brief moment she considered chewing through her own leg to freedom, she’d heard tales of other wolves doing it in times of desperation, but she knows she probably wouldn’t survive that either with nowhere to go and no one to help her. She contemplates trying to call for assistance, both psychically and vocally, but most likely anyone around to answer wouldn’t be friendly. 

As more and more time passes, a quick glance at the sky tells her she’s been at this all night, the reality of her imminent death settles over her like a cool shadow of relief on a sunny day. After everything she’s been through, after everything she’s done, bleeding to death is surely one of the more peaceful endings to her questionable life. Every beat of her sluggish heart sends her nearer and nearer to the afterlife, and even as she accepts fate, her survival instincts tell her to fight on refusing to let her lie still and close her eyes when that’s all she wants. She’s so tired, but she still pulls at the scraps of her leg, and the pain that had once been like lightning to the end of her every nerve is now more of a static tingle as she sinks further and further into shock.

She thinks about her family, thinks about how they’re probably still searching for her, still wondering what happened and where she went, and now they’ll never know. She thinks about every other path her life could have taken if not for the mistake that sent everything spiraling down into disaster. She cries for them then, the best she can in this form anyway, and she cries for herself, and her forlorn whines and high-pitched whimpers get carried away on a gentle breeze having only been heard by herself and the Fey of the forest before disappearing forever. 

She’s on the cusp of oblivion, knows she is when heavy lids she didn’t mean to close snap open at the familiar sound of a gun cocking. Once again, every molecule of her body starts to vibrate with panic because _he found her_. 

Ember would rather die right here than be taken by him again, and the sweet release of death was preferable to whatever horror he would concoct to punish her for her actions this time. She gives one more terror induced heave, and the teeth of the trap bury themselves deeper into her mangled leg as she howls in despair. In her last moments, instead of cowering like a dog, she chooses to turn and face her attacker head-on.

The man standing in front of her with a pistol pointed at her heart isn’t the devil she expects but a new evil all his own. He’s big, above average for a human, banshee pale, and the Celtic cross around his neck serves as a warning to all of her kind that this man is a hunter, and they’re bred to kill. Praying that he’ll be merciful and make it quick, Ember looks at him with an almost human expression that begs for a blissful end. 

Time seems to slow as he pulls the trigger, and she tracks the dart as it flies toward her and lands in the meat of her chest. A hot surge of chemicals hit her bloodstream, and Ember’s vision goes fuzzy dark and then black as she loses consciousness and knows no more.

)0()0()0(

Lugging the limp wolf from the woods to his car isn’t as easy as it used to be, but Sheamus manages it before the sun has fully risen in the sky, and its ascent follows him home as he drives them both back to his bunker. 

It’s just a simple house really, though its warded and boobytrapped to hell and back to keep out anything he doesn’t let in himself. The code he enters at the gate disengages the mines under the fence, and as it swings open, he drives safely up the gravel lane, admiring the wild roses growing on either side. The entire cottage itself is circled with quartz, amethyst, and tourmaline, and as he steps out of his car, the windchimes on the porch fill the yard with their ringing notes of protection. The gargoyle perched by the door grins at him in warning, and the evil eye etched into the iron knob tingles under his palm as he hauls his quarry inside, all while being careful not to disturb the salt that lines every entryway of his home. 

The interior itself is quite cozy, if not a little spartan, and it’s done up in warm shades of beige and brown and worn dark wood. The open floor plan presents him with the combined living and dining spaces plus the kitchen in the back and a bedroom-bathroom combination set to either side of the house. Forgoing his own room to the left, he instead goes for the second bedroom to the right, which serves as the containment unit when a case requires interrogation tactics such as these. 

This door is heavier, with an iron core, and it thunks closed behind him when he leans against it and releases a fatigued breath. This wolf is _not_ light. The motion-activated lights flicker to life upon his entry to illuminate white lead-painted walls and the single cot pressed into the corner of the room. Attached to the wall is a steel chain and a sigil covered silver collar that he locks around the beasts neck the second he drops it carelessly on the bed.

He sets the femur as best he can, cleans it with the sacred waters of the Black Mesa, and then coats it in a paste made from centaury before dressing the wound in linen. It would do him no good if the thing died before he got the chance to question it.

Satisfied with the job he’s done, he turns his back on the nasty cur and abandons it to the darkness of its cell until he feels like checking on it again.

)0()0()0(

When Ember comes to, she has no idea how much time has passed since her capture, but her dulled senses let her know before anything else that she lost her wolf form while in her drug-induced sleep. The pain, however, is not fucking dull, and her leg is throbbing and on fire, where tissue and bone work to reknit themselves with remarkable speed. 

The room she’s being held in is pitch black, and there isn’t even a window to allow her to guess the time. Slowly sitting up so as not to jostle her leg, she slides up the bed to lean against the wall behind her. She can feel the tight wrapping of a bandage on her right calf, but as she leans forward to inspect it, she’s brought up short by the collar around her neck and her skin itches where the silver digs into her flesh. Her hands go to the unbreakable metal, and she figures it must be magicked to keep her captive because it’s as snug now as it must have been around her wolf’s throat. 

She’s successfully gone from one prison right into another, and despair washes over her she wishes again that she had been granted the blessing of dying with the earth beneath her and the sky above her. 

An immeasurable amount of time ticks away while she sits there and feels sorry for herself, and she drifts in and out of a red sleep that echoes with the sound of screaming until the hum electricity and the glare of neon light awakens her.

Her eyes are drawn to the door, and dread slips into her veins icy and sharp and as familiar as an old friend as the thick wood opens to reveal the same hunter she saw in the forest, and he locks the door behind him with a key that he pockets instantly. Now that she’s coherent, she’s able to study him more closely, and it’s no more unsettling to her to realize that he’s an attractive man. Most bad men are. It adds to their allure and makes it easier for them to lure and manipulate their victims, and she knows from experience how deceptive a pair of pretty eyes can be. 

This man has blue eyes to make Lucifer jealous, and there’s a wide strip of red hair that covers the top of his head and is shaved smooth on either side. The bright shade contrasts perfectly with the cream of his skin, and the mustache and beard obscuring the lower half of his face only serve to make him look more masculine as if a man of his size could ever be anything but. He’s dressed casually in jeans and a t-shirt that strain at the seams over his muscular physique, and Ember imagines he’s a very successful hunter with a form like that. When she eventually locks eyes with him, he stares and says nothing but the amused arch of his brow coupled with the slow southern trail of his gaze reminds her of the fact that she’s stark fucking naked and there’s not a blanket or a sheet or even a fucking napkin for her to cover herself with. She turns away, embarrassed and humiliated, as one hand goes between her legs and the other arm comes up to conceal her breasts. 

He just laughs and tosses something at her that she didn’t notice he had, and she reaches up to catch it on reflex before realizing that her action once again leaves her chest exposed, and the bottle of water bounces off the wall onto the bed when she corrects her mistake. 

He laughs again, deep and rumbling, and then opens with, “How’s the leg?”

“Broken,” she responds sarcastically before she can think better of it.

“Obviously. Is it healing, I mean?” 

“Yes, I should be fine in a few hours,” she admits grudgingly.

“Good,” he nods, “we’ll start then.”

Without another word or any other indication of just what will be starting once she’s healed, he spins on his heel, unlocks the door, and walks out, once again leaving Ember in the dark as she awaits her fate. If she’s lucky, maybe Aleister will find her and kill her before the hunter has a chance to practice his werewolf torturing methods on her.

That’s when the tears come again, frightened and bitter, gliding acidic down her cheeks to land salty in her mouth, and Ember swallows them down with the water the hunter left her.

She hopes it’s poisoned.

)0()0()0(

When Sheamus is safely on the opposite side of the door as the wolf, he gulps in a steadying breath as unease skates down his spine, and his heartbeat ratchets in his chest. In the twenty-plus years, he’s been doing this, he’s never once encountered a female werewolf, they’re becoming increasingly rare, and most die during childbirth, so the reality that he’s got one in his house unsettles him like almost nothing does these days. The fact that she’s naked and gorgeous doesn’t help matters at all, either. 

She’s small – _petite_ – but she’s curved sweetly in all the right places as far as Sheamus could see and her chocolate skin, if not for her condition, would be luminous with vitality and strength. The dark roots and auburn locks of her hair match the fur of her wolf, but the otherworldly red of her eyes has been replaced with a mesmerizing brown, and her wide mouth sits plush and tempting on the oval of her face. Before she covered herself (and during her slip up with the water) he was able to get a flash of luscious breasts, dark nipples, and the fuzzy mound of her cunt, and she was decadent.  
He’s never found himself attracted to evil before, other than the occasional gold-digger here and there, and by all rights, he shouldn’t find himself attracted to it now, but he does.

She could very well be a murderer, but the tiny wolf in the next room fires his blood with lust for sure, and that’s going to make it a hell of a lot harder to kill her when the time comes.

)0()0()0(

Turns out the water definitely wasn’t poisoned because when the door bangs closed the next time and Ember jolts awake, she feels better – almost completely healed and if not for the silver around her neck draining her energy, she’d be a hundred percent fine.

“Do you feel those sigils etched into the collar you’re wearing?” he asks without preamble, still no more bedside manner than the last time he was in the room. 

She traces her fingers over the intricate designs cut into the metal though she’s unable to decipher any of their meanings.

“Some of them are enchanted for malleability, others for containment and control, but one of them is a sigil of truth that removes your ability to lie to me, wolf. However, if you foolishly try to lie to me anyway, the collar will begin to constrict until it strangles you. Nod if you understand.”

She glances at his stern face and nods, once, before turning her eyes back to her knees.

“Good. Now, cover yourself up,” he says, and this time he tosses her a balled-up towel that she immediately hides under. 

It only covers her to mid-thigh, and she has a second to wonder why he bothers with her modesty at all when she notices his averted gaze and the twin points of rosy red blooming on the high points of his cheeks. What kind of hunter gets rattled by a little nudity, she thinks, the situation growing ever more confusing by the minute.

“How long have you been in Ireland?”

“Two years, I think,” she answers with a shrug. “I’m not really sure what the date is.” When the collar doesn’t tighten around her throat, she assumes her answer was honest enough to appease the magic of the sigil. 

“Are you responsible for the murder that happened in Kirkriden Forest?” he asks, skipping any further test questions and going straight for the point of this little lie detector test.

“No!” she huffs, startled, and offended by his bold insinuation. She’s never killed anyone in her entire life, even with her supernatural condition.

He watches her intently, waiting for the collar to tighten in response to her lie, but it never does, because she’s _telling the truth_. The surprise of her honesty registers in the slight lift of his brow, but he recovers quickly with narrowed eyes and a downturned mouth.

“What do you _know_ about the murder in Kirkriden Forest, then?”

“Nothing!” she yells, unable, or unwilling to control her outburst. 

There’s no way she can tell the hunter about Aleister, tell him that she’s spent the last two years as the reluctant pet of madman who used her to threaten and intimidate and assault his every competitor and enemy. He wouldn’t care that Aleister had used magic and mind games to keep her beholden to him and his every whim. No, all he would hear is that she was capable of being dangerous and aggressive, and then he would kill her on the spot, and despite her earlier wishes and prayers, Ember doesn’t really want to die.

She wants to be _free_.

As the sigil recognizes her lie magic sizzles across the collar and it vibrates as it adjusts and squeezes tighter around the column of her throat. It’s digging into her skin in an uncomfortable manner now, making it harder to breathe and painful to swallow, and she gasps in the silvers grip.

“Strike one,” he says darkly. “I’ll ask again: what do you know about the murder in Kirkriden Forest?”

“I can’t tell you!” she wheezes around the dangerously tight hold of the choker around her neck, and she hopelessly searches his face for a reprieve.

“Strike two. What do you mean you can’t tell me?” he asks, considering her reply.

Aleister’s evil promises ring in her ears as tears form in her eyes from the compression of her windpipe, and she gulps in air harshly as her head starts to throb with trapped blood. The pressure builds and builds until Ember’s sure her head is going to explode in a spectacular show of crimson when the truth tumbles unbidden out of her mouth, and she signs her own death warrant.

“If I tell you, he’ll kill me. He’ll find me, and he’ll kill me, and then he’ll kill you for having me. I didn’t want to do it, I didn’t want to do any of it, but I couldn’t kill anyone.” she rambles without pause. “That’s why I ran away, but I stepped in your trap. I was hoping you would kill me, but you didn’t. Why didn’t you kill me?” she cries, staring directly into the disgusted periwinkle of his eyes.

“What do you mean you didn’t want to do it? Who’s going to kill you?” he inquires, forging on without acknowledging her own distressed questions.

“My master!” she screams. “I didn’t want to hurt any of the people that he made me hurt, I didn’t want to spy on them, and I didn’t want to sabotage them. I just want to go home,” she continues, and her crying only makes it more difficult for her to breathe, “but he said that if I ever ran away, he would find me again and starve me before he set me loose on my family, and I was afraid. I’m always so afraid, all the time, and I just want to feel safe again.” 

“Who’s your master?” he asks gravely, taking a few warning steps closer, and Ember cowers into the corner.

“Aleister! Aleister Black!” As the horror of what she’s just confessed ricochets around her skull, she whips toward him and extends one pleading hand. “You have to kill me! I can’t go back to him. I don’t want  
to hurt anyone! Please, you have to kill me, please!” Her eyes light on the gun under his arm, and she goes on frantically. “You can do it right now, before he catches my trail, please!”

He takes a few appalled steps back and shakes his head in dismay. “I’m not going to kill you, wolf.”

Then he whispers something in Latin that makes the collar loosen to its original neutral hold and once again leaves Ember alone in her cell.

This time – he leaves the lights on.

)0()0()0(

Sheamus listens as the tragic truth pours depressing and real out of the pretty wolf’s mouth, and rage blazes an inferno in his gut the more he hears of her sad tale.

Oh, he knows Aleister Black, knows him very well indeed. They were somewhat rivals here on the island, and though they’re both hunters, Aleister is a talented sorcerer with a family heritage dating back to the time of the druids, and he has no scruples when it comes to using that power to meet his ends. Sheamus draws the line at using magic on humans, and outside of the last resort rough interrogation, he refuses to torture or maim his targets. If it’s not a quick, clean kill, Sheamus wants no part of it. Aleister though relishes in the blood and the agony and the screaming as he takes apart his victims’ piece by piece, and it doesn’t surprise him now to learn that Aleister found himself a werewolf pet to control and degrade into the perfect little slave. 

They often clashed over his unethical tactics before Sheamus left, and Aleister had unsuccessfully tried to kill him a time or two over the years much to Sheamus’ amusement. 

Perhaps the murder of his friend wasn’t just the coincidental kill of a rogue werewolf but in fact, was a deliberate message sent by Aleister and meant to bring Sheamus home. Perhaps, it was time, after all these years, for his old enemy to finally follow through on his promised death threats, and if that’s the case Sheamus welcomes the challenge because this time he has a promise too.

He’s going to destroy Aleister Black, and he’s going to get the wolf home.

)0()0()0(

When her captor returns again, he’s pushing an honest to god fucking room-service cart, and Ember catches the scent of mutton and onions as her stomach rumbles obnoxiously and twists tight in hunger at the smell. He comes closer, and she pulls the towel tighter against her chest as she eyes him warily.

He pauses with the cart about a couple feet away from the cot, and his expression looks softer than granite for the first time since they’ve met. He speaks smoothly and evenly, and his accent washes over her in a calming brogue instead of the grating scratch down her spine of his bad cop routine.

“I said it before, and I’ll say it again: I’m _not_ going to kill you. I’m also not going to hurt you.” He pushes the cart towards her without moving himself and then goes on. “I brought food and more water. I know you must be hungry, and I should probably look at your leg,” he says, big hand coming up to rub at the back of his neck nervously.

Ember already knows her leg is fully-healed, knew it the last time he was here even, but she nods her permission anyway, curious to see what exactly he’s going to do. 

He approaches cautiously, and his big body barely fits on the foot of the bed when he sits down, but his hands are gentle where he lifts her leg to settle it on his knee. His fingers trail delicately up the side of her calf to the edge of the bandage, and he unwraps it with a hummingbird-light touch as goosebumps shiver to the surface of her skin. 

It’s the first time in two years that she’s been touched with something other than anger and violence, and even something as clinical as unbandaging her leg has something fluttery and warm growing inappropriate in her belly. Staunchly choosing to ignore the feeling Ember chooses instead to watch as the unraveling linen reveals pristine inch after pristine inch of shiny new skin where ragged chunks used to be. 

“Amazing,” he whispers, notes of awe tinging his tone as he rubs his thumb over the unblemished skin of her calf. 

His thumb is warm and weapon-rough with use, but he touches her tenderly, almost reverently, and Ember gasps as that warm fluttery feeling intensifies, and his eyes dart to her face at the unexpected sound. 

“Did I hurt you?” he asks, suddenly stricken with the idea of causing her pain.

It’s a stupid question because, _of course_, he hurt her, it was his trap that she stumbled into in the first place, but Ember knows he’s not referring to the forest. He’s referring to right now, he’s referring to the thumb still absently caressing her leg, and pain is the last thing she’s feeling.

“No,” she breathes, and for a moment, their eyes lock as something fuzzy and electric charges the air around them and something intangible and undefinable passes between them.

She’s the first to break the circuit by dropping her eyes back down to where he’s _still_ touching her like something precious, and when he catches on to the same unintentional action, he yanks his hand back like she’s bitten him. Those red splotches are back on his face, and he clears his throat before he speaks, and the fluttery feeling doesn’t go away now that he’s no longer touching her.

“Uh- yeah, leg looks good. How does it feel?”

“It feels fine, all better. You did a pretty good job setting it, or it would have taken longer to heal,” she admits. “So, thanks, I guess,” she says, tucking some of her messy hair behind her ear.

“You should eat,” he says, lowering her leg back to the bed before standing and grabbing the tray from the cart, which he sets in her lap.

Up close, she’s now able to see that it is, in fact, a mutton stew laden with onions, carrots, and celery. There’s also a thick slice of rye bread, a glass of what looks to be orange juice, and another bottle of water. He takes a sip of the juice and then a spoonful of the stew before setting it back on the tray.

“So you know I didn’t do anything to the food. As I said, I have no intention to kill you or to harm you. I’d actually like to make you an offer that could be very beneficial to you. I know who Aleister is, we’ve crossed paths many times before. What he’s done to you is just another offense on a long list of crimes, and I mean make sure he never hurts anyone or anything ever again, if you catch my meaning, but I’ll need your help.”

She does. She most certainly does, and ending Aleister, the man who’s spent the last seven hundred and thirty plus days tormenting and harassing her, will be the sweetest revenge for his once-loyal lapdog.

“I’ll do it,” she replies, earnestly and without hesitation.

The corner of his mouth tilts up, and he chuckles. “You haven’t even heard what’s in it for you.”

“It doesn’t matter what’s in it for me. A hand in Aleister’s death will be more than enough. Even if your plan is to kill me after that, then I will still cooperate because he needs to be stopped. I’m not worth more than the hundreds of other people he’ll make suffer.” 

A shadow crosses the hunter’s face, and his brow wrinkles in frustration. “I’m not going to kill you, damn it!” he booms, voice reverberating off the walls, and then much softer, “I’m going to get you home.”  
Ember has exactly zero reasons to believe him, he hunted her, captured her, and is technically holding her against her will, but despite all of that, she almost trusts him. He did set the trap, but it was dumb luck on his part that she walked into it. On a good night, she would have been able to spot the trap from a mile away, but she was in a panic at the time she was caught in its snare. He did tranq her and bring her here, wherever _here_ was, without her consent, but all in all the time she’s spent here hasn’t been that bad. He’s tended her wound, he’s given her water twice, and he’s giving her food now, and the only real harm that’s come to her since has been due to her own lies. This man has had every opportunity to kill her, and he hasn’t, swears he won’t now that she’s promised to help track Aleister.  
Not to mention the heated admiration of his eyes on her body and the unforgettable way he touched her with something next to wonder, but it’s her own confusing emotions that make her want to trust him more than anything else. He’s been kinder to her than anyone else since she was brought to Ireland, and she _wants_ to believe him if only to better explore the feelings he evokes in her. Her heart may have led her astray before, and following it again may turn out to be another incredibly stupid decision, but Ember’s choosing to do so anyway. 

After all, these are hardly the worst conditions she’s lived under.

“Thank you,” she says, grasping for the proper honorific, “uh – what do you want me to call you, hunter?” she asks tentatively.

“You can call me Sheamus because that’s my name, wolf.”

“Ember,” she supplies, “please, call me Ember.”

)0()0()0(

Sheamus watches the wolf – _Ember_ – eat from his perch on the end of the cot and she’s got the most proper set of table manners that’s he’s ever seen. 

She starts with the bread, ripping little bites from the hunk of rye over the bowl of mutton so as not to make a mess with crumbs, and after dipping the pieces into the stew she moves her entire upper body over the tray, so she doesn’t spill any liquid on herself or the bed, all while keeping the towel pressed tight to her body. As she drinks politely from her cup, the level of juice never seems to get any lower for how ladylike the sip, and every time she reaches for the glass, the towel dips low between her breasts, so Sheamus is once again tempted by the smooth rich skin covering her sternum. He tears his eyes away and reminds his traitorously twitching cock that to feel anything other than protective of Ember would be wrong, and if he even _thought_ about her sexually that would be like taking advantage of her vulnerability and somehow gentle nature. 

He won’t allow himself to become another of her tormenters, won’t allow himself to become any more like Aleister in her eyes. He kills dangerous things for a living, yes, but he is not coldblooded. He has a heart, and he is capable of feeling sympathy and empathy and refuses to let Ember see him as anything less than a human being. A flawed one certainly, but a human being nonetheless. 

When she’s finished eating, and the juice is all gone, she turns bright clove colored eyes on him, and her soft voice fills the silence. 

“Thank you, Sheamus, for the food. I was wondering, though,” and her eyes drop as her throat visibly works under the collar, “can I go to the bathroom, please?”

The fact that Aleister, and hopefully _not_ him, has her afraid to ask even to go the bathroom makes his eye tic with fury, but he lets none of that show when he talks to her. Vows he’ll never raise his voice or use an angry tone with Ember for the duration of their stay together.

“Of course.”

He stands and removes the tray from her lap before returning it to the cart, and his hands barely tremble with trepidation as all of his instincts tell him not to release Ember from the collar. She may seem kind and innocent, but she’s still a mature werewolf, and she could rip his lungs out of his chest in an instant. It’s a challenge to go against everything he’s ever known, to forget his decades of training, and he has to force every millimeter of movement out of his hands as he inserts the key in the lock. The clicking of the internal mechanism is loud in the hush of the room, and as it _snick snick snicks_ open with a pop, Sheamus knows Ember’s enhanced ears can pick up the rabbit-race of his heartbeat. 

It’s the perfect time to strike, he’s _so_ close to her, and next to unarmed except for the knife at the small of his back. It would be easy for her to use her speed and agility to chew through his throat before he even has a chance to think about defending himself, and he takes a few involuntary steps away from her. It does make him feel better, safer, for less than a second, and then she looks up at him with big brown eyes shimmering with hurt, and then he just feels like shit. 

“You can take it off now,” he says sheepishly.

She moves with deliberate slowness so as not to spook him as she reaches up to remove the collar and sets it gently on the bed. The change in her is instant and magnificent to watch. With the silver no longer in contact with her skin, no longer draining her powers, a warmth and a vitality returns to her that hadn’t been there before. Her skin brightens, seeming to glow from the inside, and the untamed mass of her hair suddenly goes silky and soft. Her eyes blaze with an internal fire that scorches him when they turn to meet his own and when she speaks, even her voice is different, deeper, and more confident and rolling with magic. 

“I’m gonna stand up now.”

He nods his acknowledgment, and she takes hold of the towel again as she swings her legs over the side of the bed and gains her feet for the first time since her injury. He expects her to wobble or for her leg to be unsteady, and he’s almost ready to catch her if she falls, but she stands strong and sure, and he feels like an idiot, not for the first time in her company. 

She stands there patiently, unmoving, in what must surely be an impatient situation, and he’s impressed by her restraint. “Over here.”

Turning his back on her is certainly the dumbest decision he’s ever made, and a shiver works up his back and over the line of his shoulders as the baby-fine hairs on the back of his neck stand on end in anticipation. He half expects to feel the slash of claws or the sharp bite of fangs, but the recently developed stupidly trusting part of his brain tells him that he’s never been safer in the presence of a werewolf than right now.

Walking across the room, he feels along the wall until he locates the hidden door, and with one push, it pops open. On the other side of it is a reasonably modest bathroom – sink, toilet, shower – he’s a simple man, after all, has no real need for luxurious things, and it’s not like he’s entertaining any real _guests_ in this bedroom anyway.

No, if any _entertaining_ happens, it happens strictly in Sheamus’ bedroom, and he really needs to not think about his bedroom or how much fun it would be if Ember wanted to join to him in there instead.

“Here you go,” he says, clearing his throat as he tries to clear his mind, and when Ember walks by him, she barely comes up to his chest. _Fuck_, she’s tiny. Tiny enough for him to lift and twist and bend, but strong enough to take _everything_ he has to give and rake scratches into his back. Werewolves have a higher base temperature than humans and Sheamus wonders if that means she’ll be warmer on the ins-

Son of a _bitch_, Sheamus thinks, closing the door behind Ember like he closes the door on his ever-carnal thoughts about the diminutive woman on the other side.

Forcing himself to turn around, he walks stiffly back to the cot and plants himself safely on its surface to wait for Ember to finish up.

)0()0()0(

Peeing in a toilet after nearly a week in wolf form is the best fucking feeling honestly, and Ember shivers in satisfaction at the lack of grass tickling her underside or bugs buzzing in her face. As she sits there, she takes the time to peruse her surroundings. The shower is to her left, and in front of her is one of those little freestanding cabinets that upon closer inspection, holds nothing but toilet paper and bathing utensils. The sink is to her right, and there’s nothing on the countertop except a bottle of antibacterial soap. She doesn’t know what she expects, bloody skulls and implements of torture probably, but it’s just a typical bathroom, if not exceptionally clean for a male bachelor in his late thirties to early forties.

Finishing up quickly, she washes her hands, tries not to notice how insane her hair looks, and instead gazes longingly at the shower. Maybe she should ask Sheamus if she could use it? The worst thing he could do was say no. (Well, that wasn’t _really_ the worst thing he could do, but she’s stubbornly choosing to ignore any other possibilities.) So, with a deep calming breath, she pushes the door open and pokes her head out.

“Do you- do you think I could take a shower?” she calls softly.

She can hear the slight increase in his heart rate and his throat works with his comically slow swallow as he nods once and then turns away.

“You can use the towel you’ve got to dry off. I’m gonna go find you something to wear when you’re done.”

He doesn’t wait for her to answer just stands up and leaves the room so fast it almost makes her think he’s not entirely human himself. She’s used to people being scared of her, especially since she became Aleister’s pet, and though the feeling is always terrible, like frozen icicles of dread and the sour flavor of remorse, Sheamus being uncomfortable around her is a whole new flavor of rancid shame.  
She wants to go back to his grin and the aquamarine amusement of his blue eyes and not furtive glances and eager escapes, but she worries the only reason she even saw those at all was because of the silver chaining her to the wall. It saddens her to know that she could die soon, and the last true touch of pleasure she will have ever know will have been at Aleister’s hand. From before he bespelled and kidnapped her, of course, but she still wishes she could wash away the feel of his hands on her, of his mouth and his – other things… as easily as the dirt and grime of the past six days. 

Her thoughts again turn to Sheamus as she folds her towel for later use and turns on the shower. Maybe she could ask him if he would be willing to have sex with her? Spending her last night alive with an honorable hunter isn’t the worst she could do, and there have been moments where she’s thought he might find her attractive. When he saw he after she first woke up, for one, or when he unbandaged her leg, for another, but it certainly isn’t enough to make so bold an assumption as to think that he _desires_ her. Were she to kiss Sheamus, he was just as likely to stab her in the heart with a silver knife and use her hide as a rug as he was to kiss her back.

The shower is fairly easy to figure out, one knob, turn it left for hot water, and then right for cold water and back to the middle to turn it off. The water heats up rapidly, and there’s already a little bit of steam billowing out into the bathroom by the time she steps in and closes the curtain. She’s unable to suppress her moan as the hot water washes over her and seeks out every ache and pain that she’s been ignoring since she ran away from Aleister. The shower pounds heat into Ember’s sore muscles, and she just stands there basking in it until her fingers start getting pruney, and she figures she should actually get clean while she’s in here otherwise, this whole experience was just a pleasant waste of time. 

There’s only one bottle of body wash, and she helps herself to it, assuming Sheamus won’t mind since he said it was alright for her to shower in the first place, and then she goes ahead and uses his shampoo and his conditioner too because it’s not like she has her own. The bathroom begins to smell like him from the moment she squeezes the blue gel out onto her hand, and she starts to take deeper, longer breaths as she admires the musky vanilla cedarwood scent of him. It’s grounding and soothing, and she decides immediately that she won’t mind smelling like him for a day or two or seventy.

She’s a minute into her three-minute conditioner wait time when the room goes arctic cold, the air and the water both losing their warmth at the same moment the lights begin to flicker and a menacingly hard body presses itself against her back.

“Hey, she-wolf.” He breathes into her ear, and her blood turns to ice in her veins, and her shivering heart pumps it through the rest of her until she’s just a well-made sculpture. “I’ve almost found you, and soon, I’ll be coming to take you home.” 

His chuckle makes pimples of self-preservation prickle over her skin, and she wrenches herself away from the sleaze of him, but she slips on the slick floor of the tub, and falls right to the ground, taking the shower rod and curtain with her. The impact throbs through her sharp and painful, and she swipes furiously at her eyes as conditioner drips into them while searching the room with eyes that burn with panic as well as soap, but there’s no one there.

Aleister is nowhere to be found. Yet, she knows he was here. The stench of sulfur and hellfire still stings her nostrils, and the only explanation for that is the black magic Aleister wields so well, and if he’s able to project his astral body here, then he must be close to finding her. She’s been in one location for too long, and that’s allowed for the tracking of her to become easier and more precise. If she doesn’t leave soon, he could be here in as little as a day. 

The idea of being found by him is near to the top on her list of worst-case scenarios, and she doublechecks the bathroom just to be sure he really isn’t there, but thankfully, she’s completely alone. 

Well, except for the utter mess she’s made of Sheamus’ bathroom, that feels pretty fuckin’ present.

There’s plastic under her ass, and the rod is caught at an angle between the toilet and the sink. The shower’s still running, so water is splashing everywhere and forming a puddle just outside the porcelain of the tub. She’s also managed to knock over the small cabinet with her fall, and there’s a tornado of toilet paper and body wash all over the tile floor, and the toilet paper goes moist and soggy instantly as it soaks up the water from the flood she’s caused with her clumsiness.

She’s sure if Sheamus wasn’t overly fond of her before then destroying his bathroom isn’t going to garner her any more points with him, and she’s really trying to get them to a place where they can be less than enemies. Ruining his house certainly isn’t gonna get her there, and if Aleister’s appearance means anything, she’s quickly running out of time to change Sheamus’ mind about her.

Ember needs to clean this place up, and _fast_.

)0()0()0(

Sheamus is in his bedroom, definitely _not_ thinking about Ember’s trim little body sprawled across his queen size, as he tries to find something – anything – in a size small enough to even stay on her slight frame. He’s just settled on an ancient but intact pair of athletic shorts from his slimmer high school days and a plain blue t-shirt when he hears an unholy crash from the other room. 

His heart immediately starts a war drum in his chest, and the adrenaline racing through his body makes him hyper-aware as his fight-or-flight instincts kick in, but for him, there’s only ever one option – fight. 

Pausing only long enough to grab his gun, the real one this time and loaded with silver bullets, he jogs across the house and shoves through the door to the other room. It’s only another few steps, and then he’s yanking the door to the bathroom open to scan the room with his gun drawn. The only thing he finds though is the wrecked remains of his bathroom and a dripping Ember on her knees as she scrambles to salvage wet toilet paper and mop up puddles with her single, now drenched, towel.

She freezes and drops everything in her hands the moment he steps into the room before looking at him with frazzled eyes. She’s still naked, gleaming and wet from the shower, and the lust hits him hard and fast in the gut like a one-two punch combination, and the eroticism of seeing her on her knees is the cherry on top. He imagines what it would be like to have her on her knees by choice, smiling deviously and with desire in her eyes instead of caution or fear, but that’s all he gets – especially when her eyes light on his gun and she goes tense with anxiety. He lowers it instantly, but that only seems to comfort her a little bit, and she still hasn’t moved an inch, not even to cover herself like before. 

“I thought it could have been an attack, the gun wasn’t about you,” he says, clicking the safety and setting it on the counter. “What happened?”

“It was an attack,” she says, “in a sense, I mean. I’ve been immobile for too long, which means he’s able to track me through blood magic, and he sent an astral projection of himself here to intimidate me. I got spooked and slipped, and everything else just kind of happened. I’m gonna clean it up, though, don’t worry.” 

“I’m not worried about the bathroom.” he scoffs, shaking his head in disbelief. “I’m worried about you, and I’m worried about Aleister. Are you okay? He didn’t do anything to you, did he?” he asks, only a little surprised to realize that the concern coloring his tone is genuine.

“No,” she denies, “_he_ wasn’t really here just his visage. I’m alright.”

“You weren’t hurt in your fall?” he probes, just wanting to be sure.

“I’m fine, Sheamus,” she assures him firmly.

“Good,” he nods, “why don’t you rinse up, and get dressed.” He retrieves the clothes he dropped by the door when he burst in and trades them for his gun on the counter. “I’ll just wait in the other room.” 

He makes it a point to avoid looking at her tantalizingly nude form again, and he’s mostly successful when all he catches is a flash of her thick mocha thighs as he turns around and exits the room.

)0()0()0(

The clothes Sheamus brought make Ember look like a child playing dress-up. The shirt positively dwarfs her and falls nearly all the way to her knees, and while the shorts are really more like pants, she’s able to pull the drawstring tight enough to get them to sit snug on her hips. There’s a school logo on the bottom of the left leg of the shorts, but it’s too faded for her to really figure out what it is, and it disappoints her a little know that she’ll probably never learn where Sheamus went to school. Not where he went to school or what he likes to eat or what his favorite book is. She’ll never get to know any of a million details about Sheamus’ life or his feelings because she’s not a part of that life.

She’s not a part of anyone’s life. 

It leaves her feeling carved out and hollow and disconnected because all she wants is to be part of something else. 

As long as that something doesn’t hurt or leave her crying with guilt in her bed at night, that is. A clause Aleister was never willing to accept, had tried to train, beat, and manipulate it out of her, but her humanity was the only thing she could hold on to in the face of such narcissistic evil. Aleister thought that friendship, kindness, and love were weaknesses that needed to be expelled from a person through blood and pain and indifference and the only solace she could find after he’d make her commit horrendous, despicable acts, was in the fact that her actions still made her feel bad.

After kidnapping and holding the daughter of a powerful mage hostage so Aleister could con the man out of his most powerful spells, Ember had cried for days until Aleister magicked her mouth shut, and her only choice was to remain calm or pass out from hyperventilation.

When Aleister made her break the fingers of every witch in a coven he discovered for daring to practice within the same borders as the mighty Aleister Black she wasn’t able to eat for a week for the queasy feeling in her stomach that wouldn’t fade as long as the sound of snapping bone and feminine screams filled her ears.

The worse she felt about something she did, the more she felt she was actually holding on to her humanity, that try as he might Aleister was failing, and she might have continued on like that. Mindlessly obeying him out of fear and dreading the day she didn’t feel anything after one of the devil’s missions until the night he asked her to go too far.

They were just supposed to rough the hunter up, find out what he knew, but he wouldn’t crack, and Aleister had demanded that she kill him. A voice in Ember’s head cried out at that moment, and it told her that if she took an innocent life, a human life at that, there would be no coming back.

So, she ran, and the rest is, as they say – history.

Taking one last look at herself in the mirror, she combs her fingers through her hair, and she’s gratified to see that while it’s nowhere near perfect, it’s at least presentable now, and _clean_. Puffing out her cheeks on a powerful exhale she nods at herself in affirmation and then leaves the bathroom.

He’s waiting for her just like he said he would be, his big body making the small cot he sits on look even smaller, and he perks up when he sees her, sitting up a little straighter where he leans against the wall. He’d taken away the room-service cart while she was in the bathroom, and he’s replaced it with a wooden chair, handmade and sturdy, directly across from his position on the bed. It’s obvious that Sheamus wants to continue the conversation started in the bathroom, and Ember doesn’t make him spell it out before she crosses the room and sits in the provided chair.

“Color looks good on you,” he says, surprising her with the compliment, and he sounds oddly pleased with himself like it’s got absolutely nothing to do with the color and everything to do with the fact that the clothes are _his_. 

“Oh,” she responds, trying not to be flattered and failing, as a pleasant warmth fills her face, “thank you for lending them to me.” 

“Anytime,” he quips, tone and expression slightly wicked, but he sobers almost instantly. “Are you ready to talk more about Aleister now?”

“Yes.”

It was now or never, and they needed to have a clear plan _before_ he found them. Every wasted second allowed Aleister closer to his goal.

“Alright, you mentioned that Aleister could track you and that he could project himself to your side. Does that mean he knows where you are?”

“Not yet. He will have seen the bathroom, but there’s nothing in there to tell him where I am, but if I stay here, he will be able to find me.”

“How long?” Sheamus asks seriously, and she can see the wheels turning in his head as he tries to calculate what their best course of action is.

“A day, maybe less.”

After a moment, Sheamus nods, and a slow, satisfied smile spreads across his mouth as he claps his hands and opens his arms in invitation. “We’ll let him come then. My place is warded and protected by near everything known to man or witch, and I’ve got enough firepower in here to make an American cream their jeans.”

“Okay,” she says, unconvinced, “but amulets and AK’s will only get you so far with Aleister. He won’t stop coming at us until we’re dead or he is. So, what’s the rest of the plan?” 

“This is,” he declares, picking up a glass vial from beside him on the bed and shaking it between two fingers.

There’s a somewhat thick red liquid inside of the vial that swirls almost menacingly in Sheamus’ hand. “What is it?” she questions.

“This, my dear, is a power stripping potion. One drop of this into Aleister’s bloodstream, and he becomes as mortal as I am – no more magic – and once he’s human…” he trails off.

“Then we can kill him,” she says, picking up his train of thought. “How do we get it in his bloodstream, though?”

“That’s the tricky part. I can soak blade or bullet in the potion, and we can dose him that way, but one of us will have to distract him while the other attacks or he’ll be able to deflect our shots. So, we’ll have  
to time it perfectly or-”

“I’ll do it,” she interjects. “I’ll distract Aleister while you sneak up on him and do what you need to do.”

“Are you sure?” Sheamus asks, brow furrowing. “I could-”

“No,” she interrupts again, “I’ll distract him. He’s going to be looking for me anyway. I can approach him and pretend to surrender, and while he’s focused on me, you can move in.”

“If you’re sure that’s what you want to do, then I think it’s a solid plan.”

“I’m sure,” she repeats. “I just have one question though: how did you get a power stripping potion? That’s incredibly powerful magic to be able to remove it from another, and it can’t have been easy to find.  
So, where did you, a mortal hunter, get something like that?”

“Couple of sisters out in California,” he chuckles, “and let’s just say these girls make Aleister look like a juvenile magician.”

Ember doesn’t need to hear any more than that to know she’s made the right choice.

)0()0()0(

After their conversation, Ember learns that it’s almost seven o’clock in the evening and that she’s been with Sheamus for a little over twelve hours. 

Sheamus decides to show her around the property (or most of it anyway – he’s got _acres_), the house (it’s actually really homey and cute), then they put the weapons to soak in the potion (he’ll be back for those in a few hours), before finally settling in his living room.

They both sit on the sofa, a respectable cushion length between them, and the silence that surrounds them is surprisingly not awkward. When she listens for his heart, she’s excited to hear that it’s steady and rhythmic and not racing with adrenaline for the first time since he let her off the leash. It’s comforting to listen to the unwavering throb of it in her ears, and within a few breaths, her heart has synchronized itself with his until they’re beating in perfect unison. It’s a detail that Sheamus couldn’t possibly notice, and Ember is grateful for it because it feels intimate to her, something secret and private and thrilling, and she wants to keep it for herself. 

There’s an end table in front of them with a few books and papers scattered on its surface, but that’s not the important bit. The important bit is the half-full bottle of whiskey and the deck of cards she also spies on the dark wood. As a plan forms in her mind, she figures if tonight is to be one of her last nights on earth there’s no time like the present to go after what she wants. 

Angling her body towards him on the couch, she gestures towards the cards on the table. “Do you play poker, Sheamus, because I’m betting you can’t beat a Texan at Texas Hold ‘Em.” she challenges.

He turns to her, and his eyes sparkle sapphire with amusement as he meets her challenge with confidence. 

“I once beat an empath at poker, lass. You’re on.”

)0()0()0(

They spend the next few hours talking and laughing as time ticks by slowly, and the whiskey disappears quickly. 

She’s up two wins to one when he excuses himself to finish preparing the weapons and Ember’s five shots past caring about the fact that she’s staring at his ass as he walks away. It’s fairly large, plump and round, and the points of Ember’s canines tickle her lips when she thinks about biting into it. 

Sheamus got a donk, she thinks, dissolving into a fit of giggles.

He’s also handsome and witty and oddly kind for someone of his profession. He makes Ember laugh and smile, and sometimes there’s a heat to his eyes or his voice that makes her go all soft and melty in a way she hasn’t since being seduced by Aleister. She wonders what it might feel like to have Sheamus’ wide callused hands gliding over her skin instead of Aleister’s thin cold one, wonders what it might be  
like to have his big body draped over hers not to use but to please. 

She imagines being Sheamus’ lover would be a lot like being his prey, and having been the focus of his single-minded determination and intensity already, she can only fantasize about how it would feel to have all of that erotic attention turned her way.

But it doesn’t have to stay a dream, does it?

They’re both adults, and maybe Sheamus is just as lonely as she is, just as worried about the possibility that their days are numbered and that number is one. Perhaps he wouldn’t mind kissing her or touching her or being with her since this might very well be their last opportunity to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh before Aleister sends them straight to hell. 

The worst thing that could happen is that he says no, rejects her flat out, in which case Aleister won’t have to kill her because she’ll die of embarrassment right here on the spot. 

But what if he says yes? That’s an entirely different can of worms that has lust spilling sticky and sweet into her stomach as her pelvis clenches in need. Why shouldn’t she allow herself this one moment of weakness before being more courageous than she’s ever been?

She’s given no more time to think about it, though, because that’s the moment Sheamus decides to reenter the room. His hair is a little disheveled and fluffy from where he keeps running his hands through it, and his face is just a little flushed with liquor, and Ember wants to know what his beard is going to feel like scruffing over her sensitive inner thighs. There are tiny beads of sweat pooling at the base of his throat, and she wants to clean them up with her tongue, wants to suck and bite and tease his entire body until all of that pale skin is pleasure pink, and he whines her name. 

“Alright, where were we? I believe I was just about to tie things up, isn’t that right?”

She isn’t aware of his movement, but he’s suddenly back on the couch next to her shuffling the cards as he readies to deal the next hand.

“I think I’m done playing.”

“The whiskey catching up to you already, lass? I thought werewolves had a higher tolerance than most.” he ribs with a laugh.

“I’m not drunk,” she answers sternly, staring directly into his face as it grows serious, “are you?”

“No,” he says, refusing to break eye contact with her.

“Good,” she whispers, slowly scooting across the couch to close the distance between them.

Once she’s at his side, she removes the cards from his limp fingers and tosses them onto the table, useless now that she’s decided to take what she wants. He stares at her, unmoving, barely breathing, and  
she can hear the way his heart rate increases, can practically smell his arousal where it seeps saccharine out of his pores. She crawls into his lap, wide cornflower irises tracking her every movement as she settles her knees on either side of his hips, and her hands go to his broad shoulders. His crotch is pressed tight against hers, and she can feel the heat of him through her borrowed shorts and her hips twitch forward of their own accord. 

He inhales sharply through his nose, and his hands fly to her waist to keep her still. She slides one hand up over the corded muscles of his neck then around to the back of his head and up over prickly smooth skin to tangle in the patch of thick red hair at the top. She tugs just a little bit to get him to tilt his head back, so she can have a better angle, and his fingers dig into the meat of her hips.

“I’m going to kiss you now,” she states, and when he doesn’t stab her, she leans down to seal their mouths together.

His lips are a little dry under hers, but they’re soft and warm and reciprocating as they taste each other soft and slow. It’s so chaste at first, just them sliding their lips together really, until Sheamus’ tongue darts out to tease wet across her bottom lip. She opens her mouth on a smile at his show of initiative, and he dips inside to lick over the perfect line of her teeth and then deeper to dance across her own tongue. She swirls her tongue around his and chases him back into his mouth to soak up the flavor of whiskey and mutton, and something spiced sharp that’s all Sheamus. His mustache tickles her nose, and the shivers it causes zigzag down her back to zap static pleasure into her clit.

It’s fucking intoxicating, and she licks deeper to trace over his molars as she moans into his mouth. She forces herself to pull back – because oxygen – and she nuzzles her face against his, burying her nose in his beard and inhaling down over his neck.

“I love the way you smell,” she rumbles, animalistic gravel grinding up her voice in her throat as lust fogs over her brain, “strong and earthy and virile like an alpha should, want you so bad, Sheamus. Do you want me, too?” she asks, nibbling over his shuddering pulse gently.

His hands go up her back as he wraps his arms around her, and whatever space is left between their bodies is eliminated as he draws her closer. She takes this as an invitation and drags her tongue in a hot line up the side of his neck to his ear, where her teeth flirt with the lobe.

“_Shit_, Ember, of course, I want you,” he groans, before yanking her back by the shirt to gaze into her face, “but are you sure this is what _you_ want?”

“I know I don’t want Aleister’s hands to have been the last to touch me if we should fail tomorrow,” she answers passionately. 

Something tender passes through his eyes as he searches her face, and then he nods once before connecting their mouths again. 

They kiss like that for a while, lazy and slow, and Ember enjoys the rhythmic give and take of their oral explorations of each other. At some point, Sheamus hardens beneath her, and the thick bulge of his cock fattening up against her pussy gets her wet like nothing else has. She rocks her hips down into his, and her clit sizzles with need at the blissful friction.

Once again, Sheamus pulls away to pant heavy against her chest. The moist air of his breath penetrates the cotton of her shirt and spreads warm over her breasts to tease newly interested nipples. She’s never had a man react so strongly to her after so little on her part, but it makes her feel powerful and sensual, and she fucking loves it. 

Her arm comes around his head to cradle him between her breasts, and her other hand goes to his hair to comb gentle fingers through his hair. “Take me to bed, Sheamus.”

He stands from the couch with her in his arms as if she weighs nothing, and she instinctively wraps her legs around his waist as he carries her to his bedroom. It’s much like the rest of the house, comfortable and lived-in, if not a little messier than the rest of the spaces she’s seen. When they make it to the bed, he lets her slowly slip to the floor, and she rolls her body sensually against his on the way down just to torture them both.

He’s already seen her naked multiple times, so it’s nothing for Ember to pull his shirt over her head and toss it aside. Her nipples stiffen even further in the chilly air of the room until they’re pinched points of sensation that tingle with every jiggle and sway of her breasts. With one pull of a string, the shorts follow the shirt to the ground, and she’s nude in front of him for the third time. 

He looks at her more deliberately than before, like he’s actually allowing himself to take her in and appreciate her this time. He starts at the top of her head and trails slowly down over the angles and curves of her face to her neck before tracking over her collar bones and to her breasts. She does her best not to squirm under the scrutiny, but his expression is appreciative and bold as opposed to judgmental, and it fills her with pride instead of shame. His eyes keep traveling lower, over her stomach and hips to her thighs and the treasure in between. She has a moment to worry over the fact that she definitely hasn’t shaved anything for a while, but he doesn’t seem to mind when his tongue darts out to moisten his lower lip, and he swallows audibly.

“You’re fuckin’ gorgeous, Ember.” he breathes with wonder.

Trying to play off just how much his honest words please her, she just chuckles and rolls her eyes playfully. “Yeah, we already know that, but I’ve been dying to see what you’ve got going on under there, pale sexy,” she says, motioning pointedly at his still clothed figure.

“Oh, you want to see what I look like in the buff now, is that it?” he jokes.

“Yeah, that’s what I want,” she confirms softly.

“Well, good thing for you, I never like to keep a lady waiting.” 

He reaches for the hem of his shirt, and it’s not like he’s _trying_ to make it sensual or erotic but as inch after inch of his freckle dotted porcelain torso is slowly revealed it starts to feel like a striptease for the way her attention is riveted to his every move. She watches the flex and pull of the muscles in his chest and shoulders as the shirt is dropped carelessly to the floor, and he toes out of his shoes as his hands go to the button of his jeans. The fly follows, and then he’s bending over to tug his pants down his legs and catching hold of his socks as he discards them all in one go. 

When he stands again, nude and enticing, she’s finally able to take in the full glory of his body for the first time. He’s big _everywhere_, bigger even than Aleister, his arms so thick she couldn’t even hope to wrap her hands all way around them, and his thighs are powerfully built to match. His stomach is flat and chiseled with defined abdominals, and his pecs are muscle plump and mouthwatering, but it’s his cock that has her spellbound. It’s above average in length and girth for a human, uncut with the glistening head poking out from between the roll of his foreskin, and flushing a deeper and deeper pink as blood rushes to fill him at her hungry inspection. Yet, even the fantastic size and shape of him isn’t what truly holds her enthralled.

No, the reason she finds herself unable to look away from his cock is because it’s wrapped in finely tattooed black calligraphy. 

Taking an interested step forward to get a better look at the text on his body Ember runs the tip of one curious finger down his length as she asks, “So, what does it say?” 

She’s not going to bother with asking if it hurt. Of course, it hurt. All tattoos hurt, some more than others, but the pain is part of the cleansing experience of getting tattooed in the first place. The pain and the blood wash away everything else when you’re in an artist’s chair, and after it’s all said and done, you leave with a beautiful scar that reminds you of triumph instead of failure.

“Well, it’s-uh- it’s a bit of a double entendre that my younger self found incredibly amusing.” He pauses to rub a sheepish hand over his neck and looks anywhere but at her as he says, “It says, ‘with a shout, with a scream, bring them to their knees’, in Gaelic. Kind of a nod to my – _prowess_ – both personally and professionally as it were.” 

He looks embarrassed like maybe he shouldn’t feel proud of his sexuality or his body or his professional accomplishments, and to Ember that’s a tragedy. If you can’t take pride in any of those things then what _can_ you take pride in? No, in a world full of fake friends and real enemies the only praise you can really count on is your own. Sheamus knows who he is, knows what he wants, and where he’s going, and that’s a feat worth celebrating – overly confident tattoo or not. 

“Are you gonna scream for me then, Sheamus?” she asks, tone deep and sultry, as she grasps his cock tight in hand and gives it a few firm strokes. 

He looks puzzled for a moment, whether from her question or the distracting hand on his dick she’s not sure, but as she sinks to her knees in front of him, realization dawns on him and his cock twitches.  
She doesn’t give him time to answer, doesn’t give him time to even think, and since he’s already hard, she doesn’t tease him or herself before wrapping her lips around the leaking tip of his cock. The flavor of his essence bursts salty over her tongue, and she licks at the slit until she’s lapped up all the delicious liquid. A few more strong sucks to the head, and then she’s sliding down the length of his cock as he stretches and fills her mouth to capacity. She makes it almost all the way down his shaft before she has to pull back or risk gagging herself, but that doesn’t deter her. She keeps at it, slowly working her mouth up and down as her saliva slicks the way for her descent, and when she finally takes him in all the way she hums around him in satisfaction. 

Bracing her hands on his marble thighs, she swallows around him a few times, and her eyes travel up the ridges and planes of his torso to his face. His eyes are twin pools of black as his pupils blow out to overtake shimmering arctic blue, and his cheeks are coated crimson with lust. She pulls back at a glaciers pace steadily inhaling through her nose until she’s suckling at the tip once more, and then she repeats the process. His entire body tenses, shivers, relaxes, and then his hands are diving into her hair, but he’s not pulling or forcing, he’s just holding on like he needs something to ground himself in the onslaught of the dedicated attentions of her mouth. 

She’s lost to it for a while, the ancient rhythm and primal carnality of the suck and slide of her mouth over delicately hard skin, and the erotic music of Sheamus’ gasps and grunts of pleasure. She feels as if she could stay down here for hours, calm on her knees, and resolute in her purpose, but eventually, Sheamus’ hands do tighten in her hair and tug her back, away from the appetizing length of his cock.  
“You need to stop,” he whispers, and Ember almost doesn’t hear him over the lust-infused rush of blood in her ears. 

Why would she stop? 

Nothing’s ever been more perfect than the static silence of her mind as her muscles take over, and the glowing concoction of pleasure and pride fuzzing through her body intoxicates her. She doesn’t want to stop, never wants to stop, only ever wants to be here on her knees with Sheamus’s hands in her hair and his cock in her mouth until everything else disappears around them. 

“Why?” she huffs, disappointment obvious in her tone.

Tilting her head back and using his grip on her hair, he guides Ember to her feet before he leans down to kiss her fierce and a little reckless and uncaring of the taste of his own cock on her lips. Pulling away, his breath puffs moist and warm over her mouth as he growls his response. 

“Because when I cum, I mean to do it buried deep inside your pretty cunt, Ember.”

The desire drenched rumble of his voice mixed with his vulgar use of the word _cunt_ does something to her. It fires her blood, and her wolf spreads red and intense into the lust black of her eyes as her canines sharpen in her mouth. “Then why aren’t you fucking me already?” she demands.

“Because I like to take my time,” he says, releasing her hair and moving his hands to her hips, “and I want you to cum on my tongue.” He follows that statement with a wolfish grin and a wink, and then he’s lifting her and tossing her onto the bed with ease.

He follows her down, and she’s instantly caught in the shadow of his big body as he cages her in with strong arms. She’s trapped between Sheamus and the bed, but she doesn’t feel the need to escape. On the contrary, she wants him closer, wants him pressing against her tighter, pushing her into the mattress harder, wants _more_. 

“You’re stunning, Ember.” 

She preens under his praise and arches underneath him in an effort to force their bodies together even as he keeps himself poised frustratingly above her. He smirks at her predicament and then decides to take pity on her as he lowers himself and connects their lips. The kiss is too light and fleeting for the needy hole in her gut, and she chases his mouth as he lifts himself away from her again, and she whines at the loss.

He does push-ups over her body, rewarding her and himself with a kiss on every downward repetition. He kisses over her neck and shoulders and collarbones, and his beard drags ticklish tingles of arousal over her flesh, and it shivers into her pussy. He licks pointed circles around each of her nipples before pulling a diamond peak into his hot mouth and _sucking_. He teases the bud until it’s oversensitive and throbbing with intensity, and then he worries it between his teeth with _just_ the right amount of pressure to make her cry out and jump beneath him. He does the same to her other breast, and by the end, she’s lifting her chest and trying to shove more of her tit into his talented mouth.

He’s ready to move on, though, so he releases her moist breast and kisses down her sternum. He continues lower over the butterfly of her ribs to the fluttering flat of her stomach until he’s finally, _finally_ settling his mouth over her mound. She spreads her legs without question, eager to make room for the breadth of his shoulders between her coffee-colored thighs. He inhales deeply over her pussy breathing in the secret scent of her, and he shudders before licking over her folds.

“_Yes_.” she hisses, as even that lightest of touches has pleasure blazing an inferno in her pelvis. 

His arms go under her thighs and curl around to press heavy hands into her hips as he settles down to lick deeper into her pussy. When his tongue dances over her clit, she keens and freezes before rolling her hips into his mouth for more. Sheamus is happy to oblige, and he licks and sucks and eats at her pussy like a starving man, given his favorite meal. He works her over expertly searching out the perfect rhythm, perfect speed, perfect pressure, and once he’s found them, exploits them until she’s nothing but a writhing mess of moans.

“_Fuck_, Shea, that’s good.” she gasps, delving her fingers into his hair.

That’s when he decides it’s time to sink one thick finger into her snatch, and while it might have been good before now, it’s fucking fantastic. His attention to her clit never falters as he circles his finger inside her, and that tight ball of pleasure behind her cervix explodes in a shimmering shower of pleasure confetti. A scream gets caught in her throat and vibrates there as a guttural gurgle, and Ember presses him deeper into her pussy as she fucks herself on his face and paints his chin with her cum.

He either doesn’t realize she’s cum or he doesn’t care because even as she’s going limp and boneless with her release, he’s still licking at her clit and circling inside her cunt. It’s intense and nearly overwhelming in its euphoria, but he fucks her through it steady until she’s shaking apart under his mouth for the second time.

He slinks back up her body, and every inch of her skin has gone erogenous because no matter where he brushes, touches, caresses, turns more and more of her form into pure, luminous energy. He slams their lips together, desperate and needy, as he filthily feeds her the remains of her own orgasm. It feels like a claim, sears her like a brand, and instead of balking at the thought of ownership her wolf rumbles with satisfaction and possession, and her fangs are back in her mouth as she slips deeper into the animalistic recesses of her brain.

It’s heaven, and it’s nirvana, and she never wants to leave this bed, never wants to leave Sheamus’ arms, when his tongue catches on one of her canines, and he jerks away with a hissed swear as the coppery ambrosia of his blood fills her mouth.

“S-sorry.” she stutters around teeth gone almost too big for her form as she covers her mouth with her hand.

Sheamus doesn’t say anything at first, just stares at her intently as he pulls her hand down and slips probing fingers into her mouth to explore the newly sharpened points of her canines. He rubs his thumb over the row of her top and bottom teeth and then dips deeper to caress her tongue and at the same time, sinks his cock into her slow and deep.

“Don’t be.”

He’s so big, and she’s so small, but she’s wet and open after two orgasms, and he slides in welcome and snug as she clenches around him. They both groan when he’s fully seated inside her, and he thrusts his hips in a few short experimental thrusts as she grips him with velvety walls. His pace slowly increases, and she sucks at his finger in a mimicry of the way she sucked his cock earlier, and his eyes never leave her face as he fucks into her steady and deliberate. 

With his every thrust, he takes her higher and higher as his hips pump her full of pleasure. She’s on the cusp, dancing precariously near the edge of another orgasm, but she needs more – needs it harder, faster, deeper – and Sheamus refuses to go be goaded into anything other than his chosen speed. That just won’t do. Squeezing her thighs around his hips and using her preternatural strength, she rolls them over until Sheamus is flat on his back. His surprise at their sudden change in position registers in the slight widening of his eyes, but he doesn’t protest as his hands go to Ember’s slim waist. 

“Gonna make you scream, Sheamus,” she says, planting her hands on his chest as she starts a slow grind on his cock.

The angle of his entry is different with her on top, and he taps against her cervix with every rhythmic movement of her hips, and it inflates her with bliss until she’s about ready to pop. She digs red crescents into his pecs, and she snarls and gnashes her teeth at the air as she fucks him even faster, abandoning any semblance of control, and her wolf takes over as she rides him wild. One thrust, another, three, and then she’s shattering around his cock, clenching and drenching his dick in cum as she rakes pretty red lines into the pale expanse of his chest. 

He fucks her through it, pounding her pliant until she’s quivering around him with overstimulation, and she howls his name as she collapses against him. His hands go from her waist to the small of her back, and he grabs one wrist with the other hand as he drags her down into his still thrusting hips. It feels like too much, too overwhelming, too euphoric, too fucking good, but that doesn’t matter because Sheamus doesn’t stop, and neither does the approach of her fourth orgasm. Ember wails as it washes over her in a flash flood of pleasure, and she sinks her teeth into the muscular meat of his trapezius as she drowns on the bliss.

Sheamus roars when she bites him, and his thrusts go messy and desperate as he pursues his own release. “Gonna make you mine, Ember, gonna claim this pussy, baby,” he grunts, and then he’s filling her with his cum as he erupts molten and carnal inside her. 

When he’s done fucking her ragged, and they start to come down from their individual sex-highs, she removes her teeth from his shoulder and licks over the teeth marks left behind as Sheamus shivers beneath her. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?” she whispers into his neck before licking up some of the salty sweat pooling over his jugular.

“Not in any way I didn’t like,” he says, and the squelch of his cum inside her pussy proves his point when he thrusts into her to demonstrate just how much he enjoyed everything she did to him. “What about you? Are you okay?”

“I’m beyond okay. Thank you.”

She lifts her head to smile at him, and when he smiles back, dazed and satisfied, the tender emotion blooming in her chest warns her that she’s on the verge of catching a shit ton of feelings she has no business catching given their current situation. So, she shutters her own thoughts and gingerly lifts her hips until Sheamus’ softening cock slips from her pussy. His cum starts to dribble out of her opening and down her thigh, and she bites her lip and grins at the lewd glide of against her skin.

She flops onto her back for a moment, just a second so she can catch her breath, and then she’s rolling over to the edge of the bed to sit up and search for her borrowed clothes. She’s got the shirt in her hand and is considering forgoing the shorts all together when Sheamus clears his throat.

“Uh- what are you doing?” he asks, baffled.

She clutches the cotton to her chest, suddenly uncomfortable with his question. “I thought I should head back to the other room…” she says uncertainly.

“Why don’t you stay in here with me tonight?”

He doesn’t actually say the word _please_, but Ember hears it anyway, and that fuzzy feeling is back in her chest again as she nods and smiles. “Yeah, okay.”

She curls up on her side under the warm blankets, and Sheamus wraps a strong arm around her protectively as he pulls her flush against his body. She’s never felt so happy or content or safe, and it’s no time at all before the steady thumping of his heart lulls her to sleep.

)0()0()0(

In the night, she dreams of Sheamus, of his shining eyes and his quick smile and his hands on her body. She dreams of earth under her paws and wind whipping by her ears as she runs free and untamed through a hazy forest that morphs into the yard of Sheamus’ cottage, and then she’s jumping – fully human – into his waiting arms as he kisses her senseless. 

It’s an endless montage of sweet and romantic scenes that Ember longs for more than anything, but sometime in the night, as the sun begins its cyclical rise in the sky, the dreams change. They take on a filter of gray, and everything feels darker, threatening. 

She’s back in the forest, silver trap tight around her human leg, and she’s screaming in pain and terror as she rips at the metal teeth with shredded hands. The rustle of underbrush, the snapping of a twig, alerts her to the arrival of another, and she jerks her head towards the sound. It’s Sheamus coming out from behind a tree and walking towards her slowly, but before she can even feel a sliver of relief because surely he’s here _to help her_ he pulls out a gun and levels it between her eyes. He grins at her cruel and mean and just laughs when she begs him to help her.

“Why would I help a rabid beast like you, huh? You’re nothing but a dog that needs to be put down.”

He’s standing right in front of her now, the barrel of his pistol pressed to her forehead, and bitter, broken tears slide in rivulets down her face as she stares up into the face of the man she’s come to trust. A man she could quite possibly love if given the opportunity, and he merely sneers at her anguish.

“You had your chance, she-wolf. You could have come back to me, and all would have been forgiven, but you’ve made your choice, and now you’ll suffer for it.”

It’s his voice that changes first, shifting from Sheamus’ Irish tones to Aleister’s Dutch accent, and his face quickly follows as the transformation overtakes Sheamus’ form, and it becomes Aleister staring down at her. 

“I’ve found you, she-wolf,” he whispers, and the sound of the gunshot echoes in her brain as his words ring in her ears and Ember startles awake.

A panicked glance around the room confirms that it was just a nightmare, but for some reason, Ember’s heart doesn’t resume its normal pace and instead trips faster and faster behind her ribs. Sheamus is still slumbering peacefully next to her, and he looks so soft, so unburdened that she can’t bring herself to wake him up. With a light kiss to his slack lips she slips from the bed and dresses quickly before leaving the room.

She’s not taken two steps into the kitchen when she sees him sitting at Sheamus’ dining room table with his feet propped on its surface and leaning back casually as he waits. He’s dressed head to toe in his signature black and a giant red jewel glimmers at his neck. His eyeliner is on point, and his hair is slicked back model perfect. If nothing else, Aleister did always care about his appearance.

“How did you get in here?” she asks casually.

Logically she knows she should be afraid, should be terrified, but for some reason, she’s calmer than she’s ever been in Aleister’s company. He hasn’t seen Sheamus yet, doesn’t know that this is his house or that he’s even here, which means there’s still a chance that she can save Sheamus. If she can just convince Aleister that she’s here randomly, that she broke in and is alone, then maybe she can spare one good man from Aleister’s wrath. Though she’s only known him a short time she’s grown incredibly close to Sheamus, and she’s at peace with her death if it means he’ll get to go on living.

Aleister laughs in menacing amusement. “You didn’t think something as paltry as punji pits or gargoyles could keep me out, did you? I’d think you’d know me better than that by now.”

“What do you want?” 

More sinister laughter as he leaps gracefully to his feet and walks around the table. “You know what I want,” he says, slowly stalking toward her.

“Alright,” she nods in acceptance, “you found me fair and square, and I’ll come back with you now. No more running.”

“Ah ah ah,” he says, wagging his finger at her, “it’s much too late for that, she-wolf.”

Ember can feel his magic sizzle across the air a second before it hits her in the chest and launches her forcefully into the wall behind her. Her lungs burn as the impact settles knuckles of pain deep into her bones.

“Now, I just want to kill you.”

)0()0()0(

The sound of Ember’s screaming and an almighty bang wakes Sheamus from R.E.M sleep like the screech of the world’s worst alarm clock. He grabs yesterday’s pants from the floor and tugs them on with lightning speed as he grabs the gun loaded with Aleister’s special bullets from the nightstand. He doesn’t even bother with a shirt just charges bare-chested and Celtic crazy into his kitchen ready to take on the devil.

And the devil it is.

Aleister’s got Ember pinned to the floor in what remains of his great-aunt’s grandfather clock with one hand tight around her throat as he uses the other to slice her up with magic and with every swipe of his finger a new cut opens on her terrified face. There are dozens of wounds riddling Ember’s body already, some wide and deep and leaking blood onto his hardwood floor, and Sheamus has one horrifying moment to wonder how long Aleister’s been at this before he’s stomping into the room and pointing his pistol at the back of Aleister’s head.

“Get your psychotic hands off of her, Black.”

He pauses midmotion and turns to Sheamus with a genial smile. “Hello, old friend! What a surprise to find you here. How long has it been, nine, ten years?”

“Not long enough, Aleister, now get your slimy hands off of Ember!”

“Oh ho,” he chuckles, “you two are already on a first-name basis, I see. That’s nice, and what is that I spy there, Sheamus, are those teeth marks?” He pauses to drag a blood-covered thumb over Ember’s bottom lip and smiles at her fondly. “Yes,” he muses, “we do have quite the little biter on our hands now, don’t we?” and then he blows her a sickening kiss before turning back to Sheamus. “So, tell me, friend, was the bitch any good?”

“Fuck you.” he snarls, grip tightening on his gun as he takes one furious step forward, but that’s as far as he gets.  
With a wave of his hand, Aleister lifts Sheamus off the ground and holds him suspended in midair as he shakes his head in disappointment. “I thought you were better than this, Sheamus. I thought you were the best, and yet here you are, right where I’ve placed you. If our rivalry were a game of chess, then this my friend is where I say: checkmate.”

“Check this, fella,” Sheamus says, raising his arm to mist Aleister’s monologuing face over his wall when Aleister snaps his fingers and Sheamus’ wrist snaps with them.

Sheamus shouts in agony as his broken hand drops the gun, and it clatters uselessly to the floor.

“So stupid, Sheamus, so weak. You think you just happened to find _my_ pet wolf on your first-day trapping? No, even you’re not that good. It was all just a part of my master plan. I baited the hook, and you blindly followed the lure.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” he grits out through his teeth as his wrist throbs with pain.

“Oh, you still don’t get it, do you, hunter?” he asks, and the invisible force holding Sheamus in the air rattles him like a child with a toy. “I fucking planted her!” he screams, bashing Sheamus into the floor repeatedly and breaking a few floorboards in the process. The pain of the impact spreads bruising through his body as Aleister’s words stab sharp into his heart. “When you left, all those years ago, I promised you that one day, your morals and your ethics and your _goodness_ would be your undoing, and here I am to keep my word.”

Sheamus lays in a heap on the floor, and Ember stares at him with pleading eyes as she watches the fight drain out of him with each of Aleister’s heartbreaking words. He desperately wants it all to be a lie, doesn’t want to think that everything he and Ember shared over the last twenty-four hours has been nothing but an act, but the guilty glimmer of tears in her eyes is the only proof he needs of Aleister’s truth. It hurts beyond measure to know that he’s been so gullible, so used, and manipulated by someone he thought he could trust, someone he cares for.

“It was too easy, really. Kill your friend, bring you home, dangle a damsel in distress in front of your face, and bingo – mission accomplished. Now, I get to take you apart piece by bloody piece, and when I’m done with you, I’ll finish cutting the disobedience out of my she-wolf until there’s nothing left inside her.”

The first lash of Aleister’s power across his chest slices his pec open wide and red, and the muscle clenches as misery digs claws into his heart. Several more follow in quick succession, and Sheamus screams as he takes in the torn remains of his torso. The front of his body burns with lacerations and his back throbs with blunt force trauma as Aleister once again levitates Sheamus with a thought. He forces Sheamus’ arms wide like he’s being crucified, and then he sets to work on Sheamus’ uninjured hand. 

“This little piggy went to market,” he sings, breaking Sheamus’ thumb with a flick of his finger, “this little piggy stayed home.” then his index finger joins his thumb at a curved and unnaturally broken angle. 

He makes it all the way to Sheamus’ ring finger before Sheamus is lightheaded and woozy with torment and blood loss, and Ember’s voice rings out piercing and defeated.

“Stop, stop, stop, please!” she yells, and when Aleister drops him carelessly back to the ground, Ember scrambles across the floor to his side. Her hands hover ineffectually over his body as she tries to catalog his injuries. “I’m so sorry, Sheamus. I never wanted any of this to happen.” she cries, tears burning like acid where they land against his chest.

“Well, isn’t that sweet. I think she might actually care about you, old friend, but why don’t we see how much, huh?” he asks, slowly making his way towards where they’re crouched together. “You want to save him, Ember, huh, wanna stop his pain and suffering? Then kill him. Kill him, and I’ll spare your life, she-wolf.”

“No!” she screams, turning eyes that spark with intensity on Aleister. “You can’t make me kill him – I won’t!”

“Oh, come now, be a loyal dog just like I’ve trained you to be and put him out of his misery.”

Ember closes her eyes for a moment, and when she opens them again, they’re blazing bright red with the presence of her wolf, and she’s trembling with rage. Her eyes dart to the gun at her side, dropped and forgotten long ago, and Sheamus almost shakes his head in denial, begs her not to go for it with his eyes, but it’s too late. 

She mouths the words, “Forgive me,” and in a blur of supernatural speed and agility that he can’t track, she’s suddenly standing and facing Aleister. In the next instant, before Aleister even has a chance to react, a single shot rings out and reverberates in the silence of the room.

“I’m not loyal to you anymore,” she says, cold and emotionless and deadly like Sheamus has always expected her to be.

Aleister stumbles forward a few steps, and a wet chuckle gurgles out of his mouth as a single rivulet of obsidian blood spills out of the perfect hole in his forehead. He smiles and opens his mouth to speak like he doesn’t realize he’s got a silver bullet in his brain, and the only thing that comes out is a gush of more inky blood. He reaches out with one shaking hand towards Ember, and his eyes burst into golden flame as they melt viscous and pulpy down his face. He cries his own eyes out, and they burn fiery trails down his face that liquify his skin. As the flames overtake his skull and the rest of his body, Aleister starts to claw at his blistering skin, and seared chunks of flesh start falling to the floor as he screams and screams and screams. 

When Sheamus is sure he can’t stand the shrill sound of Aleister’s death knell any longer, there’s a puff of smoke as the flames are extinguished, and Aleister Black drops to the floor in a cloud of ash.  
They stare at the pile of debris that used to be a man for an immeasurable amount of time, stunned and disbelieving, as the reality of their success registers in their minds. Sheamus releases a deep breath and lets his head thunk to the floor in fatigue. 

Ember’s at his side in a second, her tiny hands fluttering over his wounds in panic as she tries to figure out how to help.

“I’m sorry, Sheamus, I’m so sorry. What do I do, what do I do? Oh god, you need _help_.” she says, emotion welling in her throat as she trails butterfly light fingers over a cut on his chest.

“Don’t touch!” he hisses as his chest stings in agony.

She yanks her hands back like he’s slapped her, and Sheamus will undoubtedly feel bad about that later, but right now all he knows is anguish. 

“Go into my bedroom and under the bed is a wooden box. Go into the box and bring me the two bottles with the blue liquid inside, okay?” he directs through gritted teeth.

Ember’s off like a shot, and its but the blink of an eye before she’s back at his side with the potions he asked for clutched desperately in her hand. 

“Open it for me and pour it into my mouth,” he instructs, remembering his manners at the last second and tacking on a belated, “please.”

He opens his mouth, and Ember tilts the contents of the bottle down his throat. The liquid glows down his esophagus and suffuses him with warmth as a healing hand brushes over his body, mending cuts and bruises and broken bones in the time between one heartbeat and the next. There is no more pain, no more hurt, just the tingle of magic as his cells grow and repair, and the potion leaves him just as well as he’d been yesterday.

“What was that?” Ember gasps, mystified.

“Healing potion got it from a real accident-prone guy in England,” he answers, sitting up and brushing the dirt from his hands. “Now, you drink the other one.”

She’s shaking her head instantly and handing the bottle to him in denial. “No, you should keep this in case you need it. I’m a werewolf, remember? I’ll be fine.”

The idea of letting Ember sit there in split open and in pain for however long it takes her to heal doesn’t sit well with him, and though the potion may have treated him completely, it wasn’t without its side effects, and Sheamus is more tired than he’s ever been in his forty-one years.

“I’ll leave it with you in case you change your mind.” he concedes, setting the bottle on the floor between them. “For now, though, I think we should both get some rest.”

With that, he gains his feet and resolutely doesn’t look at the pained expression on Ember’s face as he turns to his bedroom and closes the door behind firmly behind him.

)0()0()0(

The clicking of Sheamus’ bedroom door rings louder in her ears than the gunshot had. She wants to feel happy, wants to feel relieved and overjoyed at the fact that they did it. They killed Aleister, and now he can never hurt anyone else ever again. It doesn’t feel like a victory, though, feels so intensely like a loss that Ember doesn’t remember what winning feels like. 

Sheamus knows everything now, knows Aleister sent Ember to him as part of his master plan to exploit and destroy Sheamus as he always swore he would, and he probably thinks she’s a manipulative skank.  
It’s probably better that way though if she's honest with herself. She has no place in Sheamus’ life, and if she ever thought she did, she was fooling herself. They were thrown together, and they were stressed out, and they fucked. That was it. 

She doesn’t use the potion, looks at every bit of pain as atonement for her myriad of sins. Instead, she leaves it on the kitchen table and searches out a broom (pantry by the fridge) and starts to clean up the second mess she’s caused in Sheamus’ house. 

She sweeps up the remains of Aleister and knows a deep sadistic satisfaction when she flushes him down the toilet like the piece of shit he is. She can’t fix the clock or the floor, but she soaks up the blood with paper towels and then dabs at the stains left behind with a sponge until the wood looks almost okay again and the remains of the clock get gathered up and tossed in the garbage.

It takes her no more than a few hours to tidy the evidence of their fight, and when she’s finished, she retreats back to the room that had been her cell seeing as Sheamus’ room is now off-limits to her. She sits on the back on the bed, exhausted and emotional, but she knows she won’t be able to sleep. Her eyes drift to a particularly deep cut on her leg, and she spends the next few hours watching it stitch itself invisibly closed. When that cut is gone, she moves on to another one, over and over, until there are no more wounds that she can stare healed, and then she stares blankly at the wall instead.

She must fall asleep at some point because she wakes up curled against the wall with her knees tucked up to her chest and her arms wrapped protectively around her legs. As she blinks awake, she uncurls stiff and aching limbs, and her joints crackle and pop as she stretches her fully recovered body and wonders how much time has passed. 

When she’s fully awake, she stands up silently from the bed and tiptoes to the door. She didn’t bother to close it when she came in to sulk, and she’s grateful for it now for surely the metal monstrosity would have disturbed Sheamus’ slumber. A quick listen at the entrance to his room though confirms that he’s still asleep, and she breathes a sigh of relief. She’s lucky she’s woken up before Sheamus because surely, he’s not going to be happy to find her still skulking around his house like a kicked stray.

No, she’s decided that leaving _before_ the inevitable altercation with her former lover is probably in her best interest. Sheamus is undoubtedly feeling hurt and tricked and betrayed, and he has every right to. A lie by omission is still a lie, and Ember’s a confirmed liar. 

So, she drinks her fill from the sink in preparation, and guiltily helps herself to two slices of bread before creeping to the front door with bare feet. She’s got the door open, and two toes touched down on the porch outside when she hears the distinct sound of a throat clearing behind her.

“Where are you going?” Sheamus asks in a disbelieving tone.

Ember freezes for a second, caught, and then her spine stiffens in determination.

“Home,” she replies, and she refuses to turn around, refuses to look at him, for fear of falling to her knees and begging for his forgiveness. “I figured that would be best for both of us.”

She takes a few blind steps forward onto the porch as tears blur her vision, and once again, his voice rings out deep and disappointed. “Was any of it real, Ember, or was it all an act for Aleister?”

She stops again and wonders why she didn’t close the fucking door behind her because she is not capable of handling these emotions right now. She’s too tired, too wrecked, too beaten, but she refuses to walk away with Sheamus, believing he’s been nothing more than a convenient fuck. 

“You know it was real,” she chokes out, “the things I said, the things I did, the things I _felt_. It was all real to me, Sheamus.” Ember finishes with passion.

“And is it still real to you, Ember?” he questions.

“_Yes_,” she whispers as brokenhearted tears track unbidden down her face.

“Maybe you should stay and explain those feelings to me then.”

Suddenly his arms are coming around her, and he’s pulling her tight against the hard line of his body, and she has no idea how’s he’s managed to close the distance between them without her hearing him but being held by him again feels like a blessing.

“I’d like that,” she says with a grateful smile.

They stay there for a while, staring up at the sherbet sky as a new day dawns bright with opportunity and optimism, and Ember marvels at the magnificence of the splendid future she can almost see rising with the morning sun.

She’s finally found her place.

**End**

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Kinktober 2018 Day 23 prompt - size difference


End file.
